Posts Tagged ‘DC Vote’

“Oh man, if I had run a campaign saying I’d be working closely with Marion Barry, I don’t know that I would have been elected,” Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R, UT-03) told Marc Fisher of the Washington Post. But Mr. Chaffetz is on the House subcommittee that oversees Washington DC, and Marion Barry, former three-term DC Mayor, represents Ward 8 in the District of Columbia Council.

Mr. Chaffetz loves to amuse the media by sleeping on top of a flagpoleon a cot in his DC office and eating cheap fast food. A canny professional political operative, the Congressman favors Five Guys Burgers and Fries — it’s a DC-area chain but has locations in his Utah district (Bountiful, Midvale, Orem, Sandy, West Valley). What a coincidence!

When the laws establishing the District of Columbia were created, the founders were too busy bargaining about the National Debt to consider representation of future DC residents, and their negligence has been preserved as if it were intentional. Leaders starting with Andrew Jackson tried to correct this undemocratic oversight, but Congress had inadvertently created a little playpen in DC, where congressmen could throw their weight around without consequences, and they enjoyed it. Two centuries later, they still do.

Pending legislation (S 160 and HR 157) would remedy two centuries of Congressional neglect by granting DC a vote in the House of Representatives. Democracy might finally come to the 600,000 American citizens who live in the Capital of the Free World, but there’s a hitch.

A man of strong moral principles, Republican Senator John Ensign of Nevada (State motto: Meretricis et Alea, “Whores and Gambling”) has added a completely unrelated amendmentto the bill. It would throw out gun laws established by the District’s duly elected officials and mandate interstate gun sales (illegal everywhere else in the country). Washington residents would be allowed to buy firearms in Maryland and Virginia.

Many congressmen face a dilemma. They want to end two centuries of congressional neglect and give DC citizens something even residents of Baghdad have, voting representation in their national legislature. On the other hand, they do not want to overturn local laws established by the duly-elected city government, critical laws concerning public safety.

Congress: vote “yes.” But add one more amendment to the bill first, one that requires a gun shop in the new Capitol Visitor Center.

Rich Green of Arlington, Virginia is upset. He drives his car across the Potomac to his job in Washington, DC five days a week and there are potholes in the road.

“Most of the potholes seem to stick around for months, and they can get to be more than six inches deep,” he wrote to the Washington Post. “Who is responsible for this section of road, and why don’t they repair the potholes …?” he asked.

Mr. Green did not ask who is responsible for causing the potholes or suggest who should pay for repairs.